I say to my patients, to understand weight loss and methods, simply do opposite to what you do when you save money in banking. I hope this article puts this in perspective.
The phrase "You are what you eat" is a decent way of saying "you are what you put in your mouth". The latter phrase can make people who are obese or overweight cry but it does make sense. One of my friend and colleagues in UK used to say this latter phrase when advising on the risk factors of overweight.
When you want quick access to your money, you leave some funds in the current account. . You put your salary or income in this account. you keep only enough money to keep you afloat in the current account. You keep a reserve account, called savings account where you save a larger amount which you can transfer quickly to the current account when necessary.
Where you think you have surplus money for the time being, you look for investments, assets and shares. The money you save in these methods, will not be available for you straight away. you need to mobilise them to realise the money to the savings or the current account. In other words, it will take time.
Now compare this scenario in banking to how your food is sorted once we consume.
Blood glucose is the current account
Liver, muscles acts as the savings account[ glycogen]
Fat acts as the investment account equivalent.[fat]
Weight gain and loss is exactly the same process of banking when you think of carbohydrate we consume. The carbohydrate we consume, namely the rice and wheat first goes to the current account. There is surplus of glucose, to what is needed for the brain, the kidneys and the muscle and all the nerves in the form of ATP. Some amount of blood glucose is put in the savings account, namely the liver and muscle as glycogen.
When there is lot more food consumed in the form of glucose, they are converted to fat and stored in various sites like our belly. Rightly or wrongly they can be termed as our asset or the investment.
But in fact we should plan our glucose consumption completely the opposite way to how we do banking as i had compared.
We need to earn less
so that we only have money for the current account and savings account
In turn we can mobilise our fat reserves in our assets and investment account to empty them.
Sounds Drastic in banking terms, does it not!. But this is true for our glucose metabolism.
Consume less glucose
so that we have only reserves in liver, muscles
In turn we can mobilise our fat reserves in our bellies and other parts of our body to empty them
The above picture shows how we can plan this. remember the base of the pyramid is still the glucose base of our diet. Hence do not starve to reduce weight, instead have more servings but less in amount
please go to this link if you want to learn more
http://www.medbio.info/Horn/Time%201-2/carbohydrate_metabolism.htm
or even better
http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2000/document/contents.htm
as the authors of the above link say
"Aim....Build....Choose for Good Health"
Regards
Chockalingam
